Abstract

Purpose: Overweight and obesity is a prevalent chronic disorder in Mexican Americans, however, obesity-related behaviors and the role of gender remain unclear. This study examined gender difference in obesity-related health behaviors among Mexican Americans. Methods: A sample (n=1439) was drawn from the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort, a prospective cohort sample of Mexican American adults aged 18 years and older living in a large and poor city along the Texas / Mexico border. The participants’ baseline demographic, behavioral, and clinical measures were used for this analysis. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were conducted to analyze the data. Results: The sample had a mean age of 48.06 ± 15.60 years, 67.06% female, 48.81% employed, 45.66% had less than high school education, 77.57% chose to complete survey in Spanish, and 31.65% had some type of public or private insurance. Females (57.82% vs. 47.08% males) were more likely to have a lower than high school education (pConclusions: There were significant gender differences in obesity-related behaviors in the Texas / Mexico Hispanic cohort. Interventions for this population need to take gender difference into consideration when designing appropriate behavior change strategies.

Included in

Share

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.